A taste of home, a journal of metaphor and muse, flavored with wit and watercolor

"When dawn spreads its paintbrush on the plain, spilling purple... ," Songs of the Pioneers song from TV show "Wagon Train." Dawn on the mythic Santa Fe Trail, New Mexico, looking toward Raton from Cimarron. -- Clarkphoto. A curmudgeon's old-fashioned newspaper column, cross-breeding metaphors and journalism and art, for readers in 150 countries.

Coffee Grounds

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Onion Buys NY Times

The Onion has ceased publication in LA and SF! No joke. Still alive in NY and where else? Switching more to online: can't sell ads. This smells. One of the few sources of satire and fun left in this all-to-serious world is much needed.

Thankfully, we still have The Daily Show and Cobert Report, but the Onion is an institution. it teaches you how to write humor, how to look at the world freshly, how to have fun.

Anyway you slice this, this has appeal for more comment.

Consider some potential Onion Headlines we'll miss:

Okie Legislature Passes Law Banning ThinkingRednecks Demand Statue at State CapitolEdmond Developers to Pave Over Hafer ParkOKC Thunder Won't Play if It's LightningEdmond Outlaws DemocratsRush Suffocates on His EgoCheney Tells Therapist, 'I've always played with puppets'Exclusive Interview: God says his real name is 'Allah'Boren Fires Stoops, Says He Wants Coach Who Can Win a Bowl GameStoops Says He Couldn't Live on $250,000+ a Month AnywayOSU Student Fails Because He Couldn't Spell "Aggie"Obama Names Clark Ambassador to Oklahoma

Silence

Meditation

Just out the window,
black silhouettes of trees
remind me of those
halcyon days with you,
when we climbed out of the
cellar toward enlightenment.
Now, at a glance, the wild
birds swing into view,
obscuring the real world
of young men dying
to get home, and the
snow that falls on
our brains stays solid - never
melting into springtime.
On the ferry, we sit and
compare notes as to whom
in life has suffered the most;
men, women, boys, or girls?
Suddenly, in a revelation, you
say it is the Buddha over on
Main, who sits on his plywood
altar, surrounded by plastic
flowers, subjected to all the
passersby, who have never had
a Zen thought of their own…
--K. Lawson Gilbert